Scientists not only carry out research or run projects for businesses. They also create products and start enterprises that can help solve the problems faced by education.
At the end of 2022, the ecosystem of Polish technological businesses was electrified by the news that NovaKid, a new Cracow-based startup that had created an online platform for learning English for children, obtained 4.25 m dollars from investors. Another piece of information soon followed: Brainly, a website with questions and answers concerning school subjects, received financing worth 80 m dollars. NovaKid and Brainly are two startups in the EdTech sector, which gathers new businesses that employ modern technologies in education.
Until recently, EdTech businesses resembled an ugly duckling among other startup sectors such as Fintech, HealthTech, or eCommerce, which could count on eager support from investors. This tendency has begun to change. The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the world remote education solutions boom are the chief factors contributing to the industry’s rapid development. In 2015, the value of the EdTech sector was estimated at 107 billion dollars. By 2025, it might be worth 305 billion dollars.
Ever more Polish startups join this sector. Some of the new businesses that intend to revolutionise teaching with technology are those established by Polish scientists. Researchers and academic teachers use their expertise to create products and services that will motivate pupils to study, help teachers in their work, or facilitate staff training. Below, we present five education startups whose founders have links to the academic community.
Photon: a robot teaches programming and AI
Photon is a robot. It looks somewhat like a small dog with feelers. When you take it out of the box, it has no skills whatsoever. It has to learn everything from scratch. Its instructor is the child, who teaches Photon successive skills (such as measuring distance, or differentiating between darkness and light) and at the same time learns programming and logical thinking and finds out about artificial intelligence.
Thus, Photon is the first robot that develops along with the child. It is dedicated to children aged six to twelve. The teaching process involves elements of gamification and storytelling, among others. Each Photon robot is different, as each child determines its individual learning path.
Photon was developed by four students (now graduates) of Bialystok University of Technology: Marcin Joka, Krzysztof Dziemiańczuk, Michał Grześ, and Michał Bogucki, as well as their teacher, Maciej Kopczyński, PhD, Eng. The work on the robot lasted about two years. Almost 100 prototypes were built and nearly 3000 children were involved in tests and talks about the robot. Today, Photon is available in 70 countries worldwide (including the US and China). Almost 80% of the copies sold in 2020 are used in education facilities, as the robot is being adjusted to the core curriculum in a given country.
Photon Education - an educational robot is a teaching aid for learning programming, physics and supporting the emotional development of a child. Photo: Photon.
PixBlocks: programming for everyone
Another way to learn programming is through the PixBlocks platform. The creator and initiator of PixBlocks is Dr. Krzysztof Krzywdziński, teacher at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (and the founder of several other startups). He developed the product as he was looking for a tool that would help him teach programming to his own children and that would at the same time adapt to the user level.
The feature that distinguishes the application is that it can be used by persons of different ages and at various stages of education. Moreover, the app automatically checks the correctness of the completed tasks. PixBlocks teaches block-based programming (to children) as well as text-based programming (to adolescents and adults). It includes various types of courses, tasks, and lessons, and allows the users to design their own games. It can be used at schools (it offers a special admin panel for teachers) and by individual users.
The application was tested by scientists and teaching staff at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. PixBlocks has more than 50,000 users and is used in more than 1,000 schools in Poland.
Universality: from student recruitment support to remote classes
Jerzy Czepiel, a teacher at the Jagiellonian University and a businessman at the same time, found it hard to assess whether his students would be good at technologies used in business. This is how he came up with the idea of Universality – a tool that connects academic teachers, students, and business, and facilitates IT staff recruitment. Generally, Universality is a platform that provides access to tasks prepared in collaboration with businesses and thus supports making contacts between businesses and IT students, i.e. the former’s future employees.
The pandemic induced the creators to open Universality to the needs of schools. As a result, it has morphed into a platform for online classes, as well. It enables teachers to move their lessons to the virtual world, manage their classes, give students various assignments, and monitor their progress. Additionally, IT teachers have access to numerous IT tasks. The application is used by several universities, including the Jagiellonian University, the University of Lodz, and Cracow University of Technology, as well as several dozen elementary and secondary schools in Poland.
Insta.Ling: increased effectiveness of foreign language learning at school
Insta.Ling – Dr. Natalia Banasik-Jemielniak, researcher with a PhD in Psychology with completed research fellowships at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Prof. Dariusz Jemielniak, author of numerous language textbooks with experience at Harvard University and MIT, and a team of linguists from the University of Warsaw – this is the group of scientists behind Insta.Ling.
Insta.Ling is an application tailored to the needs of schools. It supports foreign language learning (English, German, Spanish, and French) and increases the effectiveness of learning at school. The app enables teachers to manage sets of expressions the pupils need to learn and to check the regularity and effectiveness of their work. Schools can use the platform free of charge.
As the creators of Insta.Ling emphasise, they used their own research based on millions of repetitions as well as state-of-the-art studies on the functioning of memory and learning effectiveness when developing the platform.
VMersive: virtual reality teaches businesses a lesson
Virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) technologies are just perfect for education, especially in those areas where students should spend hours practising specific moves or preparing for specific situations. This is how VMersive uses VR/AR. This new startup was established by three employees and PhD students of Warsaw University of Technology. Their research at WUT aims at increasing the potential of virtual reality. As entrepreneurs, they develop products and services that employ VR/AR in training for industry. They specialise in training in the form of multiplayer VR games.